I bought the MATE materials and skipped out on textbooks cause I wasn't planning on reading them but the outline mentions that it's good to have them on hand in case you want to go deeper into a subject even if you don't read the whole textbook. How viable is it to completely forego the textbooks?

If your company pays for it, I would definitely pick them up. There were questions very briefly mentioned in the study material that appeared on the exam. Although you are not likely to spend much time studying the textbook in depth anyway, if you do and the material you studied somehow appears on the test it could save you a try.

If your company pays for it, I would definitely pick them up. There were questions very briefly mentioned in the study material that appeared on the exam. Although you are not likely to spend much time studying the textbook in depth anyway, if you do and the material you studied somehow appears on the test it could save you a try.

Agree with this 100%. Also, I found having the textbook as a reference very useful for parts of the study manual.

I bought the MATE materials and skipped out on textbooks cause I wasn't planning on reading them but the outline mentions that it's good to have them on hand in case you want to go deeper into a subject even if you don't read the whole textbook. How viable is it to completely forego the textbooks?

I found them to be useful for a deeper understanding of the MATE materials. I also have all of my textbooks available for sale if you're interested.